Trans Iowa Stories: The Look of Trans Iowa

 "Trans Iowa Stories" is an every Sunday post which helps tell the stories behind the event. You can check out other posts about this subject by going back to earlier Sunday posts on this blog. Thanks and enjoy! NOTE- These special posts on "The Look Of Trans Iowa" will feature the images made for the event. Header art for the website, posters, t-shirts, and anything relating to number plates and other things like postcards will be covered in this part of the story.

One of the most important parts of the event over the years was our art, mostly seen as "header panels" on the "Official Trans Iowa Website". The site was first put up as a Blogger site, (free), and populated by Jeff Kerkove. Jeff was already an accomplished blogger, having been doing his own cycling based blog for over a year or so by late 2004 when the T.I. site went live. Jeff was also an accomplished graphic designer, which was what he went to college for at the University of Northern Iowa. So, he knew all the ins and outs when it came to putting up images created from different elements and how to do customized fonts, etc.

Had I been the one in charge, well, it would have been a completely different story! I had been to school for art, and I have a certain amount of talent in that area, but to do anything in the digital realm? Ha! NOT happening, and in 2004, I was totally blind to how you do anything online. (I learned a LOT very quickly though)

Jeff was doing things for the event then that literally would have cost hundreds of dollars to have done by a professional. Perhaps there was no other facet of the event that was more influential, at least initially, than the website Jeff designed. It gave the event legitimacy, because of how it was presented. Below is the first header in its digital glory, thanks to Jeff Kerkove's recently sharing this on social media for the first time in 16 years.

This set the tone for what would follow. The element of Trans Iowa being somewhat "crazy" was a bit played down but what was front and center was that this was a challenge to overcome. "Do You Have What It Takes?" I think it is really important to understand that this was the foundation for Trans Iowa, and this element, the personal challenge/overcoming bit, would be a central facet for many other gravel based events afterward. When you see folks talking about "this event will push you", or "you will find out you are capable of more than you believed", it is a nod toward the ethos that Jeff Kerkove instilled into Trans Iowa, and which I and others shepherded along until the end of the event.

It also made it clear that this was a personal challenge. Note: It doesn't say "Who will have what it takes?" It says "Do YOU?". Again- this was central to the ethos of Trans Iowa. There was a "winner", sure, but we weren't so focused on winners. We weren't focused so much on the order of finish, just that you tried to finish. I have always held that anyone who tried to do a Trans Iowa "won" over fear, the unknown, and maybe even that they won over themselves. But whatever you may think, it is clear that from the outset that Trans Iowa was a personal challenge and very different from what had occurred before it. The art, therefore, is of utmost importance here, because from "Day One", this is what was presented to the world as what we were about here.

The second version of Trans Iowa featured this header art by Jeff Kerkove.

The second header begins to show off more of Jeff's personality and brings in his take on how crazy/insane this challenge was. Of course, by this time the whole "is it a mountain bike event" thing was long gone. But you will note that there is not a drop bar bike in the header image! (From the running of T.I.v1, by the way) Jeff was a mountain biker at heart, so this whole deal with drop bars was from a place he was not (yet) willing to go.

And we had presenting sponsors. That was the first, and the last, time that ever happened with Trans Iowa. It should be noted that those sponsors were the companies behind Jeff's solo 24hr efforts. Which, by the way, were a huge influence upon Trans Iowa, which I have talked about at length here before. At any rate, this again was a very slick, professional looking website banner image that made Trans Iowa look like it was something well organized and on point- which it clearly was not! I find this rather ironic looking back. Subsequent Trans Iowa headers would take a far different approach to their messaging and there were reasons for that, which I will get into on subsequent "The Look Of Trans Iowa" posts in the future.

The next time you see one of these it will be about the T.I.v3 and v4 headers. 

Thank You: It goes without saying that I owe a tremendous debt and huge amount of gratitude to Jeff Kerkove for all the efforts he put in for Trans Iowa's website and, of course, for the event in the early years. However; this special thanks is for his posting of the original v1 artwork. I did not have this, and he graciously shared that via social media on March 28th, 2020. So, Thanks Jeff! That means a lot to me that you are taking some credit after all these years for your early influence upon the gravel scene as we know it today.

Next: A Brief History Of Numbers And Cues.